


Ways It Coulda Gone

by Miss_M



Category: The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Banter, Canonical Character Death, F/M, POV Female Character, Sexual Tension, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:59:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9417527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: You don’t keep what you don’t kill.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mesonyx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesonyx/gifts).



> I own nothing.

**I.**

The fuckers were right: Carolyn’s life did flash before her eyes. 

She didn’t see her ma and pa, the rundown spaceport on Osiris where she’d trained, any of the places she’d been. That wasn’t her life.

She was born on this desolate rock, less than 36 hours before. She was born on it, she’d lived on it, and now she would die on it. 

She had just enough time to feel – or remember feeling – guilt, sorrow, despair, panic. Flash, flash, flash, quick as a bar brawl. 

Hope, sharp as a shiv. 

Riddick was right, goddamn him: her weakness, her guilt, was killing her, not the creature causing the huge, enormous, engulfing pain in her back. 

Riddick was full of shit: Carolyn’s weakness was the only thing which separated her from him. Which made her human. Other than that, they were the same: killers, liars, selfish.

 _Shoulda gone with him_ , she had just enough time to think, to regret. _Coulda let him get me away, let him do whatever he liked to me, got too fucked-out to think. Made him make me bleed. You can live with self-loathing. Bastard._

She was flying. No harness, no suit, no ship: soaring up and backward through the air. Swooping through the rain. _Songbird_ , her pa had used to call her. _Angel._

Then the claws, teeth, whatever, sunk in her back dug deeper. She snapped, tore.

Darkness without fear. 

 

**II.**

He stopped just inside the bedchamber door. The wide, empty bed – hard to miss, even with his goggles on. 

She remained motionless in her seat by the window overlooking the Threshold. 

“I never forget a perfume,” Riddick said into the darkness. “Cinnamon, cardamom, cyanide for that almond note – beautiful.”

He reached up, pulled off the goggles. His moonstone eyes found her. She stood, stepped into the starlight, gathered her robe around her. Her sleeping robe: she should have been with her husband. She could have been planning a seduction. She could see Riddick’s brain clicking over the obvious options and settling on amusement at his failure to read her. He would not have made a half-bad Lord Marshal, had he taken the oath.

Dame Vaako shuddered inside her thin robe. The Necromonger Creed allowed no room for chance and coincidence. Zhylaw had been destined to be murdered by a Furyan. No prophecy mentioned the Furyan taking Zhylaw’s place. 

“Been wondering how long it’d take you to find your way here,” Riddick interrupted her train of thought. “Ambitious woman like you.”

She smiled tightly. “I am not here to pleasure your flesh, Riddick. Nor to feed your spirit by explaining the Creed to you. I came only to say goodbye.”

His eyes measured her, from head to foot and back again. He sat on the end of the Lord Marshal’s enormous, island-like bed. “Transcendence so soon? And we never got to know each other properly.”

Dame Vaako took courage from having her broken beliefs confirmed: a true Lord Marshal would not have mocked Transcendence. Since a false Lord Marshal had risen and ruled without so much as a binding oath, then everything she’d been Purified to believe was indeed… false. Impossible. 

She wanted to scream, tear at her flesh till her guts spilled on the floor. 

“There is no Transcendence,” she said calmly, thrilled, in spite of her resignation, to think that she might surprise Riddick. “I will step across the Threshold tomorrow, but there is no Transcendence, no… no Underverse. You are no Lord Marshal, the Necromongers are not led by a Believer, and my husband was not capable of fulfilling the simplest task: striking true.” 

After a silence during which they measured each other like duelists ( _might she have a weapon concealed alongside her lithe body under that voluminous robe? Too obvious_ ), Riddick’s voice sounded almost kind: “Never thought you’d give up. Show weakness. Not you, out of all of them.”

In her mind, Dame Vaako recoiled. In her flesh, she willed herself to approach him. A slow, measured glide across the cold floor, so he’d see her coming, take her in.

She might yet surprise him with the obvious: lift her robe over her head, straddle him, fill herself with his flesh. Tomorrow she’d fall forever. What difference would one more futile act of life make?

Sitting down, Riddick had to look up at her as she stopped before him. He brushed the knuckle of his bent forefinger down her robe, from her ribcage to her thigh. A man for whom a caress came most naturally with a fist: it was truly a shame he wouldn’t take the oath.

Dame Vaako struck: “Who is Fry?”

Riddick’s hand was around her neck, not squeezing: still, iron. He was still all over, serpent-like. 

Dame Vaako smiled. She was weak, yes, she could not resist this small, useless triumph. “Your consorts said you spoke the name in your sleep. Who was it? Boy? Girl? Some dog you fucked and lost?” 

Her throat pressed against his palm as she spoke. She would fall forever if he clenched his hand, just as well as if she crossed the Threshold. The former would be more satisfying, but the latter would be symbolic. 

Riddick brought his face very close to hers. She felt his breath: wine, food, rot. Life. 

“Fry was someone I didn’t kill, and so I didn’t get to keep.”

Dame Vaako glanced down at him, the bulk and girth of him, and thought that some deaths were glorious, some were a supernova of pleasure – but symbols were important for a person of her status. 

“You don’t get to keep me, either,” she whispered. 

A moment, a heartbeat, and he nodded and released her. 

“Go, then, with my blessing,” he said. 

Dame Vaako ignored his sardonic tone as she lifted the hem of her robe and left him alone. She hoped her throat would bruise and Vaako would notice. When all hope was lost, petty pleasures survived longest and died last, it seemed.

 

**III.**

“Lemme ask you something, sweet-like…”

Dahl waited till they were in the cargo hold with the hatch shut, let Riddick grin and grab her ass to his little black heart’s content, before she stepped back from him, unlatched her harness, and finished the question.

“You can control your heartrate, respiration. You’re fast, you heal fast. Is all that some kind of Necromonger trick? Yeah,” she added with a grin, “I know you’re supposed to be the Lord Grand High Fucking Poobah of Necromongers Past, Present, and, I imagine, Severely Fucking Disappointed.”

She had to give Riddick this much: he didn’t mind a woman fucking with him as long as it meant there was still a chance she’d let him inside her. Small but crucial difference between him and shit stains like the late, unlamented Santana. 

“No trick,” Riddick said, “and not Necromonger. Those guys would swap their wet dreams of Underverse to be able to do what I do.”

“Then how? Come on, indulge me.”

He came closer. “You know you can’t keep teasing me forever, right?”

He wouldn’t give up that info easily, so the info must be valuable. Well, Dahl had at least another day before they hit a major shipping lane and parted ways. 

Dahl loved confrontational eye contact, it made her wet regardless of who the other person was. It only failed to happen on those rare occasions when she questioned Boss Johns’ judgment. 

“Get this through your skull, Riddick. I have zero interest in any cock, unless it comes with straps and I’m the one wearing it.”

Riddick threw his head back and laughed. His laughter echoed against the metal bulkhead. 

“Thanks for that, kitten,” he said. “You might be surprised how persuadable I can be. Besides, I like your attitude, you kinda remind me of someone I used to know.”

It was Dahl’s turn to laugh. “What, the only woman in at least three systems reminds you of some female from your colorful past? Please, lick me harder, why don’t you?”

She risked turning her back on him and walking away, feeling Riddick’s moonstone eyes on her ass, confident that he wanted to fuck her more than he wanted to harm her. She swayed her hips a little. Riddick’s amused chuckle made her grin. 

All kinds of things could happen in a day.


End file.
